Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus, a power-off control method to be implemented by the printing apparatus, and a recording medium.
Description of the Related Art
The following description sets forth the inventor's knowledge of related art and problems therein and should not be construed as an admission of knowledge in the prior art.
When a printing apparatus is unstable, it can be restored to normal by a well-known technique. In this technique, an administrator user who is responsible for the printing apparatus, for example, can remotely turn off the printing apparatus by transmitting a power-off command for turning off the printing apparatus from an external terminal apparatus. Upon receiving the power-off command, the printing apparatus shuts down or restarts itself.
It is quite ordinary for such a printing apparatus to have one or more jobs in the queue; when this printing apparatus is immediately turned off by a power-off command, it will lose all jobs in the queue.
There has been a printing apparatus to solve this problem. This printing apparatus executes all jobs in the queue upon receiving a power-off command, and then is turned off (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No, 2007-320051, for example).
There has been another printing apparatus to solve this problem. This printing apparatus transmits a notice of the presence of jobs in the queue to an external terminal apparatus upon receiving a power-off command. The administrator user can selectively give an instruction for the printing apparatus to be turned off after executing all jobs in the queue or to be turned off after copying all jobs in the queue to an internal or external memory device (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2014-094471, for example).
In Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2007-320051, the printing apparatus is turned off after executing all jobs in queue. However, when there are many jobs in the queue under unstable conditions, the printing apparatus can freeze during job execution, making it hardly possible to remotely access the printing apparatus from an external apparatus.
In Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2014-094471, the administrator user can give an instruction for the printing apparatus to be turned off after executing all jobs in the queue. However, when there are many jobs in the queue under unstable conditions, the printing apparatus can freeze during job execution as in the case of Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2007-320051. Alternatively, the administrator user can give an instruction for the printing apparatus to be turned off after copying all jobs in the queue to a memory device. However, when there are many jobs in the queue under unstable conditions, the printing apparatus will execute the many jobs from the memory device after restarting, resulting in a slowdown.